There probably isn't a little black cocktail dress in all of opera that Elizabeth Futral couldn't comfortably slip into. Blessed with a shapely coloratura soprano that she regularly wraps around an impressive variety of roles — most recently the Emperor's Daughter, Princess Yueyang, in last month's Metropolitan Opera world premiere of Tan Dun's The First Emperor — Futral continues to tackle an admirable mix of the very new (Philip Glass, André Previn, Ricky Ian Gordon), the traditionally old (Mozart, Donizetti, Rossini, Bellini, Verdi) and the veritably prehistoric, freshly excavated (Vivaldi, Handel). She also has quite a figure. Moreover, she can act. This rare combination of vocal and dramatic ability, an adventuress's spirit and, oh yes, looks, would seem to qualify her for a spot on opera's glamour team of telegenic, heavily-hyped, pin-up divas.

So why isn't she better known?

"I think one can be too much known. They say any publicity is good publicity, but exposure puts a lot of pressure on the person being exposed. I'm not interested in putting myself out there so much that I'm worn out by it."

It is September. Elizabeth Futral is laughing. The picture of demure offstage informality, in jeans, pullover and schoolgirl mary-janes, she sits sipping bottled water in the dim corner of a midtown-Manhattan bar and grill, fresh from a last-minute rehearsal of Handel's Semele, in which she stars as Marilyn Monroe incarnate. The role marks her return to New York City Opera, where she last performed as Strauss's Daphne in 2004. An updated reimagining by director Stephen Lawless of Handel and librettist William Congreve's mythic fable, NYCO's Semele tells the cautionary tale of one mortal's overreaching ambition among the gods.

"I do hope audiences don't Marilyn-ize everything about it," the forty-three-year-old Futral groans, rolling her eyes. "Then again, it's pretty hard to avoid, with me up there in a big blonde wig. Plus, we do present Jupiter as an American president — yes, like JFK. Jupiter is married to Juno, the Goddess of Marriage, but philanders all the time. Semele is his latest conquest. Semele's looking for more, though — Semele wants to become immortal, like Jupiter. Of course, she dies trying.

"Semele is a secular oratorio," continues Futral, "which means we're meant to just stand and sing it. But Semele really is extremely dramatic, the libretto is just fantastic, so it's not a stretch to play it all out. I say go for it. To me, what makes opera such a powerful art form is the acting. And the opportunity is there every night, every time. Either we seize that opportunity and make things dramatic, or we don't. I can't just stand there and sing. Well I can, but why? I love the challenge of trying to create drama. That's what I'm about."

Offstage too?

"God no," she yelps. "I'm very placid in my private life."

Raised in Louisiana, Futral studied at Alabama's Samford University before moving on to Indiana University's highly regarded music school. She entered Lyric Opera of Chicago's young-artist training program upon graduation from IU, and in 1991 won the Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions.

"I've never been based in New York," Futral points out. "I lived in Chicago until about a year ago, when my husband and I built a home in Southwestern Virginia, kind of in the middle of nowhere. Isolation? Well, we do have neighbors, but the closest grocery store is twenty-five miles away. I don't think not being in New York has had any impact at all, though, on my career. It was a choice I made. When I signed with my manager, I said, 'I do not want to move here. Can you live with that?' And he said, 'Yes, so long as you come whenever I need you to sing an audition.' 'I'll be there,' I said. And I have been."

In 1994, Futral grabbed a lot of attention in a widely praised City Opera production of Delibes's Lakmé. Over the next three years, she burnished her reputation as a singer of rarities, starring in Rossini's Matilde di Shabran at the Rossini Opera Festival in the composer's birthplace of Pesaro — the first production of the work in 175 years — and in Meyerbeer's L'Etoile du Nord at the Wexford Festival. Then, in 1998, André Previn chose her to be his Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire.

"Streetcar was big for so many reasons," marvels Futral. "The play, of course, is so well known, and André Previn's a pretty important guy, and Rodney Gilfry was in it, and that was important, and Renée Fleming was in it too, and that was important. You cannot imagine how much media there was swirling around. I was just kind of along for the ride. 'You want me to do an interview? Sure, I'll do an interview. You don't know who I am, but sure, I'll do one.' Until I found myself thinking, 'Golly! What if I had my own press agent taking advantage of all this?' Everybody in Streetcar seemed to have somebody or several somebodies handling them. 'Maybe you're not making the most of this,' I thought. So I tried it for a little while — signing with a New York-based, high-level PR person, whose name I won't mention. And things did come from that, like an article in W magazine, a daylong photo shoot — dress, hair, makeup, the whole deal. What was objectionable about that? Nothing, really. But I didn't like the article at all. It was frothy. Ultimately, for the money I was paying, I didn't think the publicity enhanced my career all that much — in fact, I didn't think it impacted my opera career at all. It made me a little more visible, a little more known in the non-operatic realm. But so what?"

© Douglas Miller 2006